


Jack-O'-Lanterns

by peach_pot



Series: Hauntober 2020 [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, pumpkin carving date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26765371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peach_pot/pseuds/peach_pot
Summary: Logan and Virgil have a pumpkin carving date, but Virgil seems to be awfully worried about something.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Series: Hauntober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950718
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	Jack-O'-Lanterns

Logan walked from the kitchen to Virgil’s dining room table holding two hollowed-out pumpkins, one his and the other Virgil’s. They’d gotten home about an hour ago from the local pumpkin patch and had plans to spend the rest of the evening carving the pumpkins they’d brought home. Logan had debated also using the time to bake a pumpkin pie with the fruit that had been hollowed out, but apparently, Virgil had already promised their mutual friend Patton, the one who had introduced them to each other in the first place, actually, that he could use the pumpkin for baked goods before Logan brought up that idea. Which was perfectly fine, Patton could probably make a better pie than him anyways, but he did wish they could have made it together if only to allow him to spend more time with Virgil. They hadn’t been dating very long, but Logan was already beginning to spend a great deal of his time away from Virgil looking back on the time they’d spent together or looking forward to the next time they’d be together again.

Logan set down the pumpkins in front of Virgil and sat in the dining room chair beside him. “Alright. These are all ready to go now.”

“Oh, hey, uh, I thought it might be fun to keep our pumpkins a secret from each other until they’re done. It could be a surprise that way, you know?”

“Oh,” Logan said. “That does sound like it could make things more interesting. Here.”

Logan stood back up, moving his pumpkin to the opposite side of the table and sitting down across from Virgil, where he could no longer see what he was carving.

“I wish you’d told me about this idea sooner,” Logan said, picking up one of the carving knives set out on the table. “I already told you most of my good ideas in the car on the way home.”

“Sorry about that,” Virgil said, picking up a knife of his own. 

“No worries. I still have a few ideas I didn’t tell you about.”

Logan got to work, deciding to carve out the areas surrounding his picture instead of carving out the picture itself and starting the process of removing the larger chunks before he would move onto the details. 

“You know,” Logan said, “Pumpkin carving seems like a fairly modern concept to most people because of its association with Halloween, but humans have been carving gourds for roughly 10,000 years now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. They started to grow more similar to the spooky carvings we know today in 19th century Ireland where turnips would be hollowed out and carved to look like creepy faces. There are still some traditional Irish jack-o-lanterns made out of turnips around in museums today.”

“Oh, yeah I’ve heard of that. You know, jack-o’-lanterns actually got their name from an Irish folktale about this guy named Jack who used a cross to trap Satan in an apple tree, only agreeing to let him go if he never took his soul. So, when it came time to die, Jack couldn’t go to hell, but he certainly wasn’t good enough to get into heaven, so he was stuck wandering the earth forever with nothing but a carved-out turnip with a single coal inside to light his way as he searched for a final resting place.”

“That… I actually didn’t know,” Logan said.

“Wow. Can’t believe I’m the one teaching you something here. I’m not used to it. It feels weird. You gotta keep talking about the history of pumpkin carving so balance can be restored.”

Logan laughed. “Alright then. These turnip jack-o-lanterns were sometimes used to ward off evil spirits or to represent spirits themselves. But the modern versions of jack-o-lanterns that we’re familiar with, the ones that use pumpkins, originated in the 1800s.” Logan finished up with the larger areas he needed to carve, leaving a rough shape of what he was trying to create. He switched to a more precise knife and continued.

“Adaptations of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow would often depict the Headless Horseman with a pumpkin or jack-o-lantern where his head would be. This is because in the original story, the day after one man’s supposed encounter with the headless horseman, a shattered pumpkin was found next to the man’s hat”

Logan paused, expecting a quick word or hum of acknowledgement from Virgil like he always gave when Logan was going on one of his rants about whatever topic he was focused on that day, but received none. When he looked up he saw Virgil concentrating intently on his pumpkin, but not carving it.

“Everything alright?” Logan asked.

“Oh, yeah, all good, I just, uh, I’m done carving now I guess.”

“I’m excited to see how it turned out. I’ll try not to be too much longer.”

“No, no, take your time.”

Logan returned to carving. Even without rushing, there wasn’t much left to add, and he knew he would be done shortly.

“While the concept of carving gourds has been around for a long time, pumpkin carving as a Halloween tradition specifically is a fairly modern idea. As late as 1895, it was seen more as a general autumnal activity, and jack-o-lanterns were promoted as a part of the Thanksgiving celebrations.”

After briefly waiting for a response, Logan looked up at Virgil once again, recognizing the look on his face as the one he always donned when he was particularly anxious about something.

“Is there something on your mind, Virgil?”

“What? No. Or, yeah, I guess. It’s nothing.”

“Clearly it’s worrying you, so it must not be nothing. If you’d like to talk about it, I’ve just about finished carving my pumpkin.”

“You have?” Virgil said, looking up at Logan, his face still full of uneasiness.

“Yes, so I’ll be able to give you my full attention if you want to discuss the root of your distress.”

“Can we show each other what we carved now?”

Logan smiled. “Of course.”

“Yours first.”

“First, let’s put our candles in so they can be nice and lit up.”

Virgil nodded, grabbing the tops off of both of their pumpkins as Logan grabbed the candles they’d purchased to go inside and the lighter. Logan was careful not to catch a glimpse of whatever Virgil had carved as he set the candle inside, lighting it, and then did the same with his own.

“The details aren’t perfect,” Logan said, spinning around his pumpkin for Virgil to see, “but I still think I did well enough that you can tell who it is.”

“It’s Sherlock, right?”

Logan nodded proudly. “You’ll have to remind me to take a picture of it while I’m in my Halloween costume a week from now. Patton would kill me if I didn’t do so.”

“I bet as soon as you show him this he’ll get to work on carving Watson so he can take pictures with his pumpkin twin, too,” Virgil said.

“That does sound like Patton,” Logan said, pushing his pumpkin to the side to get the best view of Virgil’s. “Alright, your turn.”

“Yeah, my turn,” Virgil said, but he still hadn’t turned his pumpkin around for Logan to see. “Look, uh, you don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to respond if you don’t want to or you’re not ready, but, uh, I’ve just been thinking about it a lot and I wanted to say it, but I tried and I just couldn’t so I decided to do this and… well… sorry you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Here.”

And then Virgil showed Logan what he had carved: the words “I love you” in simple block letters. And suddenly his nervousness made perfect sense to Logan.

“Of course I love you too, Virgil,” Logan said, answering the question Virgil clearly wanted to ask, but couldn’t say out loud.

And with that, all the anxiety in Virgil’s expression melted away. “Really?”

“Yes. And I think your pumpkin turned out great.”

“Yours too.”

Logan and Virgil carried their pumpkins to the windowsill and set them beside each other where the neighbors could see. Sure, they wouldn’t really understand the odd duo of carvings without context, but the pumpkins weren’t for them anyway. Afterward, Virgil insisted Logan stay over a while longer and they spent the rest of the night cozied up on the couch watching a handpicked selection of their favorite Halloween movies.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic goes with the Hauntober 2020 prompt list! Hopefully, I'll be writing fics for at least a good handful of these prompts! I hope you enjoyed this little fic. My tumblr is peach-p0t if you want to follow me there, sometimes I post about fics. And thank you to Lexicon if you're reading this for helping me polish this fic :4)


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